A bit of everything...

eBay

I am quite chuffed about my little acquisition last night… I hope the shipping is quick and that the Treeman can make his way to Sydney quick enough so I can use him at the Eucalyptus Bowl.  eBay is an amazing site and I found the bidding process very easy.  Also, I paid using the PayPal system and what I found amazing was the re-registration process.  I say re-registration because I had a PayPal account about 4 years ago and I had forgotten my password.  The effort that they go into security I thought was top notch and it included me receiving a phone call from the States from an automated system at about 11:30pm last night.  Very hard to be a spammer or some other dubious crook with the PayPal registration and security system.

Trains

My train is becoming increasingly crowded.  I used to have a seat to myself 9 days out of 10, but that ration has dropped markedly.  Also what is annoying is that I moved away from the front carriages because of the large number of school girls and now just recently a young woman of uni age has taken residence in Carriage 8 and with her two male friends she sits facing backwards and squawks and laughs hideously about the most inane things in a really loud manner.  Contiki stories, underwear, Saturday night snogging and bingeing sessions, is there nothing she wont squawk about across the carriage… its enough to make you want to drive!

Petrol Prices!

But when I think of the squawker, I think of the fact that last night petrol hit $1.29 a litre at Glenbrook.  Un-farking-believable! $1.29!!  It has reached the point now that if an Arab sheik farts and has a touch of the gastro, prices swing 10c.  Because the taxes are all compounded on each other, a small swing of base price equates to larger and larger tax charges.  It went from $1.08 to $1.16 to $1.29 since the weekend… and it will probably fall back markedly during this week’s cycle.   Something has to be done about the tax structure on fuel…

Pop

Last but not least, my Pop in Queensland is in a bad way and has a cancer that is travelling about his body.  Bladder / Kidneys to spine and hip.  Only found out yesterday and its early days, but it doesn’t sound good.  With him being in QLD, makes it hard and I may make a trip up there soon.  Whilst he doesn’t read this blog, I just want to wish him the best.